Potential economic impact of integrated medical-behavioral healthcare: Updated projections for 2017

Medical costs for treating patients with chronic medical and comorbid mental health/substance use disorder (MH/SUD) conditions are two to three times higher on average than compared to the costs for those who don’t have MH/SUD conditions. Integrating medical and behavioral healthcare is one way payers are seeking to improve member health while reducing the rate of growth of healthcare claim expenditures. This report uses healthcare cost and utilization data to project spending estimates for people with chronic medical and comorbid behavioral conditions in 2017.